“”Glenn, the Nazis are everywhere. And you're not safe! So here's what you do and take it from me, my people have been through this before: First, you've gotta find an attic. Then hide there for the next three years, and whatever you do, don't make a sound. We'll let you know when it's safe to come out.

Dr.[2][3]Glenn Beck, former rodeo clown and Fox News clown, is an Americanright-wing"commentator" and a high school graduate who got lucky. He presented the eponymous Glenn Beck Show on the Fox News cartoon channel until it was dropped in 2011 due to low ratings. He currently has his own radio show and originally appeared on CNN's Headline News until viewers couldn't take it anymore (rumors that they were also mad as hell are slightly exaggerated). Beck now owns a subscription-based internet network, The Blaze (formerly GBTV), to which his Fox show was transferred in September 2011. It somehow made it on Dish Network as well.

And anyone who is called "Satan's mentally challenged younger brother" by Stephen King has got to be bad.[4]

Like others on Fox and Clear Channel, Beck was, and remained until 2014, a strong supporter of the war in Iraq and presented "evidence" that we'd win any day now.[5] (In 2014, he finally admitted he was wrong.[6]) Unlike other conservative commentators, such as Neal Boortz, Beck correctly signaled what any kid with a high school economics course already knew: that the US economy could not sustain the trickle-down Reaganomics on a Chinese credit card. Taking the stopped clock idea literally, 12 hours later he was correct for the second time, being no fan of the idea of withholding Miranda rights from the Times Square bomber.[7] That's probably quite enough stretching of that particular analogy.

Beck, a former alcoholic and current moronic Mormon, admits that he used to be imperfect until he discovered that all the world's woes are the fault of liberals, leftists, centrists, progressives, fake Republicans, or real Democrats. He is now perfect and able to bestow his wisdom upon us. His fans have a habit of asking for others to prove when he has lied and then ignoring the resulting proof. Also an annoying overuse of the word "progressive." He has also apparently gained the ability to elect himself Pope on a temporary basis; witness his attack on Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi for supposedly being less Catholic than Beck is willing to find acceptable.[8]

Glenn Beck's favorite book is The Five Thousand Year Leap[9][10] by fellow Mormon author W. Cleon Skousen, who is also the author of a series of tomes purporting to be a comprehensive history of the world through the lens of Mormon theology: The First Two Thousand Years, The Third Thousand Years, and The Fourth Thousand Years (Essentially a Mormon version of Young Earth creationism). The theme of The Five Thousand Year Leap appears to be that more human progress took place at once because of the Founding Fathers of the United States and their God-fearing worldview than in the previous 4000 years. He also put out several books of his own, trying to style himself as a modern Thomas Paine (the insane version) in Common Sense, providing a handy guide for his conversational partners (Arguing with Idiots), and addressing his audience's problems with the written word (An Inconvenient Book, The Christmas Sweater: A Picture Book). Raking in yet more cash, he has frequently taken his one-man freakshow on tours of the countryside and made a high-profile apperance at CPAC in 2010, showing off his unique take at a facepalm.[11]

He's also gone on record as believing (in the context of the debate on US intervention in Syria) that neocons are liberals, since they're "for big, oppressive government that wants to change the whole world through military action".[13]

He is cynically exploiting the people who love the Republican version of America more than their own children

Beck is emotionally unstable.

Place your bets now, please. A video from a recent photoshoot has since demonstrated that Beck is not above Vicks VapoRub® applied under his eyes to induce his waterworks,[18] although this is probably just faking things for a publicity shoot (and faking things like that isn't unique to Beck by a long shot), rather than how his infamous crying-on-air routine happened.

Beck also has a bizarrely short temper. While discussing healthcare on his radio show with a caller, he lost it completely and had what can be best described as a hissy fit, ending the conversation by repeatedly shrieking "Get off my phone!" (see exact quote below). Beck and the other presenter then blamed the caller for being in the wrong. Nice.[19]

Glenn Beck appears, for all intents and purposes, to be growing increasingly delusional as his viewer base increases. In one of his latest clips he identifies several pieces of "communist art" hiding in plain sight in NYC[20] (although, this being New York, he very well could have spotted actual communist art that he thinks is cunningly hidden).

Days after a rival DJ's wife had a miscarriage, Beck phoned her and mocked her miscarriage on air:

"We hear you had a miscarriage," remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."[21]

"You don't go after Chelsea Clinton. You don't talk about Bush kids....You leave the families alone. We haven't done anything but protect the families....Leave the families alone."[23] To be fair, he did apologize later but his apology consisted of saying he had lowered himself to the level of liberals.

Beck has recently taken a controversial approach to dealing with the United States' history of racial relations. On a recent episode of his show he argued that black activists such as Frederick Douglass were "Founding Fathers" who did not see the U.S. as a racist country.[24]. Beck followed that with an announcement that he will give a speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.[25]

Beck, who did not even go to college for more than one semester, has been given an honorary doctorate.[2] One barely has to guess from which university.

Beck compared murdered and surviving members of the Norwegian Workers' Youth League, massacred by a right-wing terrorist at their summer camp in 2011, to the Hitler Youth with this statement: "There was a shooting at a political camp which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever, you know what I mean. Who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing." In Norway, leading senior political commentator Frank Aarebrot labeled Beck "a vile propagandist" and a "fascist."

Beck compared Barack Obama to Newt Gingrich, saying Gingrich was a progressive. He said a person who opposes Obama and would support Gingrich is racist.[26]

Beck ratcheted up the level of Crazy on the subject of Obama's re-election when he asserted that the US deserved to be destroyed since such a move would "drive the righteous from among them" and all the other usual End Times crap you'd expect.[27]

In contrast, Beck is also convinced that Mitt Romney is the modern-day equivalent of George Washington[28] and Abraham Lincoln.[29] No shit.

Beck has apparently decided (in incredibly tardy fashion) that Glee, of all things, constitutes a threat to teenage America's precious bodily fluids and that the apparent cure is some strange conservative alternative to the show that will hopefully remain safely on the drawing board and not in someone's actual production studio.[30]

Beck also had no real problem with trying to smear George Soros with a two-part special on his old Fox News show with what might be termed some very suspect analogies.[31]So suspect, in fact, that the Anti-Defamation League issued a complaint about it.[32]

Speaking of Judaism, Beck had a problem with the Reform variety, comparing it to "Radicalized Islam" for some odd reason. Needless to say, the ADL took issue with him on that as well.[33]

Beck also apparently knows where to draw the line on conspiracy theories, unlike Alex Jones - namely, right over Jones' face. He simultaneously threw Jones under the bus on a gun grabber conspiracy theory and then turned right around and came up with one himself.[34]

He's under the impression that an investigation by the Office of Congressional Ethics of his fellow space cadet Michele Bachmann for campaign fund shenanigans is actually a plot by the Muslim Brotherhood, because all of that previous hue and cry she made about Huma Abedin had so much of a basis in reality.[35]

Beck was apparently so incensed that the jury in the Kermit Gosnell trial[36] was actually deliberating instead of instantly finding him guilty that he asserted that God "has got to destroy us; we are becoming an affront to him in every step of the way. We are denying his existence. We are denying his power. We are slapping him in the face. We are killing his children", etc.[37] This was followed by a predicable crying jag in which Beck begged God for forgiveness.

He compared a peaceful demonstration outside Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's house by immigration reform advocates to actions by the Ku Klux Klan during the civil rights era,[38] a view that Kobach was all too eager to lend support to on a later show.[39]

He Godwinned voiced the opinion that the Obama administration was planting the seeds of a race war, largely based on sources he seemed more than a bit vague about: doctors who were "some of the leading experts from around the world on race relations and racists", although he also stated that he didn't know "which doctors they were" even though he still felt quite comfortable citing them as unimpeachable sources.[40][41]

In most of Glenn Beck's time on Fox News he has frequently shown himself as being paranoid. Examples of this include: claiming that the Obama administration was "building something" using taxpayer money (though Beck did not elaborate on what they were building), the New World Order[42] and against the Obama administration for their "socialism," quoting George Orwell many times to show how they were turning into Big Brother. Hint: Orwell supported socialism, so the irony is very delicious here.

Beck's paranoia led to him commanding his listeners to leave their churches if they heard or saw any mention of social justice. What most people saw as attempts to help the less fortunate members of society, Beck saw as an attempt to introduce Nazism and Communism. Unsurprisingly, some Christians were rather miffed by Beck's edict.[43]

Glenn Beck has expressed multiple times that he believes that 10% of all Muslims are terrorists. In 2003, he expressed his figure in his book "The Real America". He re-presented it on December 6, 2010, when he stated on his radio talk show, "What is the number of Islamic terrorists? One percent? I think it's closer to ten percent but the rest of the PC world will tell you, 'oh no, it's minuscule.'"[44] If what he states were to be true, then there would be roughly 141,000,000 to 157,000,000 Muslim terrorists worldwide.

Never one to shy away from making a complete ass of himself in the wake of a real tragedy, Beck insinuated that there was a conspiracy to deport a Saudi national right after the Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013 due to his connection to the incident.[45] This theory seems to have originated in his own camp and nowhere else. He later posted one of his occasion cryptic s00per sekr1t messages to the government that threatened to reveal all sorts of fun stuff about Anonymous Saudi #1 and which also included all of the usual Beck conspiracy tics.[46]

Since the Federal government has seen fit to ignore Beck's watery proof for his "deported Saudi national" conspiracy (or just decided that he wasn't even close to being relevant, which is far more likely), he has since stated through his website The Blaze that Abdul Rahman Ali Alharbi is a person of interest in the case[47] and an active al-Qaeda operative despite mainstream media reports to the contrary.[48] Apparently, this is all being done to benefit the Saudis, although the usual veiled references to Satan and demons were also made for the usual tinfoil hat reasons.[49] Beck, of course, took the usual conspiracy theorist's way out of this mess and put the onus on the Feds to prove him wrong and not the other way around.[50] Further on, Beck continued to beat the drum loudly on this particular conspiracy theory, even going so far as to claim that he had access to secret information which had been scrubbed clean of certain information on Alharbi.[51] The problem with this is how Beck actually came by this information, since merely having access to it (much less broadcasting it on a talk show) would put him in jeopardy of violating several national security laws including the Patriot Act as he is anything but an intelligence agent or law enforcement officer. He also went on to challenge real journalists to pick up the story, but that trying to discredit him was strictly a no-no since that would only lead to their discrediting themselves.ego, much?

In order to confirm his theory about the deportation order, he interviewed retired Immigration and Naturalization Service Special Agent Bob Trent. As you might guess, the end result wasn't much of a confirmation at all since Trent stated that the 2123B designation is something that is placed on an individual trying to enter the United States, not leave it.[52][53]

Later on, Beck attempted to have it both ways with a confused screed chock full of cognitive dissonance where he both supported and denounced conspiracy theories concerning the Marathon bombings.[54] This could be seen as Beck trying to come off as being more truthful on the issue than competing conspiracy peddlers like Alex Jones; on the other hand, it could be seen as Beck being typically incoherent.

So far, Beck has succeeded in finding a patsy supporter in Pamela Geller. Not the most ringing of endorsements, to say the least.

The Saudi conspiracy theory might be a bridge too far for Beck, who is being sued for defamation by the Saudi national. The court was not impressed with Beck's argument that the Saudi national was a public figure because of Beck's own reporting.[55]

Beck made the claim (related to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi) that Obama has personal material on his Blackberry that could prove that he was the source of the movie Innocence of Muslims.[56] As you might guess, the charge seems a little redolent of bullshit vague.

In August 2013 he opined that possible military intervention in Syria is - you guessed it - a plot by progressives to weaken the US and bring about One world government. How? By pushing us toward a military confrontation with Russia and China, which would allow the UN to step in, avert world war and bring about Yet Another New World Order instead. [57]

In April of 2014, Salon reported that Beck described President Barack Obama as a "sociopathic dictator who is trying to keep Glenn Beck from pursuing happiness."[58] Apparently the press is entirely in on some conspiracy theory to unskew enrollment numbers. Beck finished with this gem: "I’m not going to waste. My. Life. I’m going to do what I was born to do! All men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, among these are life, liberty AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS! I have a right to pursue my happiness! I have a right to do what I was born to do, not what they tell me what to do. That’s what that phrase means!"

On the other hand, Beck did compliment the president's fashion sense and costuming skills, saying that "nobody else could design a uniform like he could".

Goldline International, a company that sells investment gold at substantially higher than market value, is a major advertiser on Beck's radio and cable television programs. During his program, Beck also regularly encourages his listeners and viewers to buy gold. And while he doesn't advertise for Goldline directly during his scare tactic rants about how the economy is going to collapse, and gold will be the only thing with value after the liberal apocalypse, we are fortunate enough that once we're scared shitless, and desperate to buy gold, we get a convenient commercial by Glenn Beck himself, telling us that Goldline conveniently has gold for sale.[59] He walks a thin tightrope of "avoiding" a conflict of interest. In 2011 Goldline was indicted for theft by false pretenses, false advertising and conspiracy.[60]

In 2012 Glenn Beck launched his own line of patriotic denim jeans, retailing at $129.99.[61] This came a year after he announced a personal boycott of Levi's for devaluing the "quintessential American piece of clothing" in a commercial showing sympathetic footage of protestors clashing with police.[62]

I stopped wearing my What-Would-Jesus-Do band, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, "Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore," and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, "Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death." And you know, well, I'm not sure.

May 17, 2005, The Glenn Beck Program, Premiere Radio Networks.

Finally -- well, he wasn't the president. He was the chancellor, Hitler, decided that it was the only empathetic thing to do, is to put this child down and put him out of his suffering. It was the beginning of the T4, which led to genocide everywhere. It was the beginning of it. Empathy leads you to very bad decisions many times.

May 26, 2009, on President Obama's statement that he would consider empathy in choosing a Supreme Court nominee.

The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be 'What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?

The Glenn Beck Program, Premiere Radio Networks, 12 January 2009

Isn't Expelled like [sic] the greatest movie ever? The New York Times hates it, so it must be good.

Beck is fond of comparing his political opponents to the Nazis. Sometimes, when Beck's persecution complex kicks into overdrive, he will recite one of his various renditions of "First they came for the Jews. Then they came for me."[67] But remember, when Beck states "they came for me," he is not referring to Germantheologian Martin Niemöller, author of the source poem that he first recited as early as 1946.[68] Instead, Beck is clearly referring to the one person he considers the most important person in the world—himself.

Of course, Beck would never—could never—accurately recite the many early versions of the poem because of all the other victims of the Nazis that Niemöller referenced. And—in what would no doubt be an earth-shattering surprise to Beck's followers—in Niemöller's many versions of this poem, the Nazis came first for the communists. Here is one version of the poem which lists as many of the Nazis' targeted groups for as possible, all listed in the order that Niemöller typically used:

They came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

Lacking all sense of irony and a well-functioning brain, Beck invoked the poem moments after attacking unionists and (alleged) communists![69]

Recently Mr. Beck decided to go and read his beloved Constitution, and found this line in Section 1 Article 9:

"The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person."

He believed it referred to a tax on immigration, and said so on his show. The quoted article from the Constitution is in fact referring to the transportation of slaves into the states - as anyone with the reading comprehension skills of goat would know.

He went on to say the Constitution is not the end-all and be-all of America:

Beck has ridiculed the Obama administration on several occasions for its cabinet's share of issues with proper tax filings.

“”Their tax issues are just one indicator of "a culture of corruption among some of the left," Beck declared just last month in a segment on his hugely popular Fox News television show, in which he branded Geithner, Killefer, Solis and a handful of other Obama nominees "tax cheats," whom he wouldn't trust "with my children, let alone my children's future." . . . Mocking the excuses offered by the nominees, Beck sarcastically intoned: "Oh, the tax thing, it was an accident. It was my husband's fault. I didn't do it, he did it. I didn't mean to do it. I was just working hard for the people."[70]

Glenn Beck and his wife run Mercury Radio Arts, to help promote and control his rights in radio, publication and television. Since 2007, Mercury has fallen behind on its business taxes in New York, and cited for filing errors in Texas and with New York worker's compensation.

“”"Mercury immediately resolved these very common accounting issues," said the source, who did not want to be identified discussing Mercury's finances.
Dean Zerbe, national managing director for a company called alliantgroup that provides specialty tax services to accounting firms, said Beck's situation "has the look and feel of somebody who is confronting an extraordinarily complicated tax situation — or at least the people he's hired to do these things are — and is trying to comply but isn't doing everything perfectly."[70]

In 2009, Beck launched the 9/12 project, a project aimed at recovering America's Christian founding values, closely allied with the Tea Party Movement. On September 12, 2009 (9/12), a massive Taxpayer March on Washington was accomplished, with hundreds of thousands of attendees, and was roundly censored by the liberal media.

Fox News dropped The Glenn Beck Show in 2011 due to the dropping of ratings and the loss of over 300 sponsors during the show's run - though he still may end up appearing as a guest on other commentators' shows. Roger Ailes apparently wasn't very sorry to see him go. As for Beck, when he announced his departure on the air, in keeping with his delusions of grandeur he likened himself to Paul Revere riding off into the sunset.[71]

Chances are he won't be back, as people now actually pay to watch TheBlazeTV on the Internet[72]. That hasn't stopped at least one very dumb person from publicly advocating such a profoundly irritating event.[73]

Beck's latest foray into terminal strangeness is yet another high-profile public rally called Restoring Love, to be held on July 28th, 2012 in Texas Stadium. Given that the participants include Beck, John Hagee, Tony Perkins, Rick Scarborough and a stark raving mad peculiar gentleman named Harry Jackson[74] (who believes that Washington, DC is secretly controlled by a demon called the Queen of Heaven who supports marriage equality and the like), one has to wonder if the "love" being restored is one you can experience without the prior ingestion of 'shrooms.[75]

Beck and former (equally batshit) show contributor David Barton recently floated the idea of establishing two-week long "education" camps (!) to head off any funny ideas that students might get from college (including, it seems, challenging Beck and Barton's singularly bizarre alternative version of history). And you thought he was kidding when he dressed up in a uncomfortably familiar-looking uniform on the cover of Arguing with Idiots.[76] In addition, Beck's vanity press publishing arm Mercury Ink has apparently picked up the rights to Barton's The Jefferson Lies (after it was rejected by original publisher Thomas Nelson) in order to cement the collaboration of two people who apparently aren't capable of knowing when to stop soiling themselves in public.[77]

Before the November 2012 election, he predicted that Romney would win the 2012 Presidential ballot by more than 100 electoral votes,[78] which resulted in a case of Foot in the Mouth Disease similar to James Inhofe's. As you might guess, he reacted to Obama's re-election in the usual fashion: with a crying jag accompanied by the usual ranting and raving.[79]

He enlisted the help of fellow weirdo Rick Santorum in battling the threat to national sovereignty that is the UN Convention on the Rights of the Disabled. Predictably, he saw the political legacy of some crazy failed artist from Austria coming to fruition if that treaty were to get passed.[80][81]

In the wake of (what else?) Barack Obama's re-election he decided to support a goofy randroid "initiative" called The American Dream Labs. He's apparently under the continued delusion impression that people outside of his hardcore crazy fan base actually care about anything he does these days.[82]

And after all else fails, Beck's a pretentious git; not only have his trademark blackboards gotten bigger and crazier, but he has very expensive tastes in microphones; on Fox News, he used two chrome-dipped Blue Kiwi microphones [83], and he now uses an apparently-vintage RCA ribbon mic, presumably to invoke such trusted voices of the radio past as, say, Charles Coughlin.

In 2010, Christian conspiracy theorist Mark Dice mailed some of his garbage to Beck after taking offense to some remarks Beck made about the 9/11 Truth movement[84]. Beck has never endorsed 9/11 conspiracy theories, to some surprise, and this has resulted in some minimal conflict with other cranks.

In January 2013, Glenn Beck announced his desire to found a model-town-cum-themepark-cum-indoctrination center called Independence, USA. [85] If he gets the 2 billion dollars to have it built, it'll include a theme park and its very own 'Media Center' where it will produce all its own movie, news, and information, away from the evil socialist propaganda that poisons the rest of it country. [86]

In May 2013 he announced a three-day event that he claims will "change the way we celebrate [the] Fourth of July". Included is an event called The Man In The Moon which he said will "engrave these things [i.e., Beck's agenda] on to your child's heart so they never forget.".[87] As of yet, there's no word on whether this "engraving" involves the use of scary clowns, demonic hand puppets, hallucinogens or—even worse—other seemingly deranged talk show hosts.

In early June 2013 he decided to have a conversation with himself (wearing a Boston Bruins cap on the one hand and a bad wig and fake mustache on the other) as both an IRS agent and White House official in a typically tone-deaf effort at combining humor and political commentary.[88]

On Monday, June 10, 2013, Beck announced that he'd lost his voice, due to his "vocal chords [sic] paralyzed." He did this by holding up a series of cue cards, whilst dramatic music played in the background.[89] Unfortunately, he seems to have been talking just fine ever since.

↑ VIDEO: "Glenn Beck has 'Nazi Tourettes's'" -- Lewis Black commentary on The Daily Show, at about 5:12 on the video. (Also, at about 4:30 on the same video, Beck rewrites the poem as "First the came for the banks . . . insurance companies . . . car companies.")

↑ In case you didn't get the irony, Paul Revere's ride, as popularized by Longfellow, not only occurred at midnight, but was also the prelude to a major, long and ultimately successful conflict and not the conclusion. If anything, he's thinking of the ending of any number of spaghetti westerns where the "hero" rides off into the sunset. My hope is it was Shane.